Earlier this week I got on the bus to head home and sat in the back on one of the side benches. The back of the bus is a U-shaped compartment with five seats across the back, and three seats on each side above the wheel wells. Across from me are two pretty high-school girls sharing an I-pod. Next to me is a typical ponytailed software geek. He's reading a book on COBOL. On the back seat scrunched into the corner is a single woman, heavyset, mid-twenties, scowl.

Another office worker gets on, late 20s, lanky guy with reddish-blond hair and beard. Kinda cute, in my opinion. He sits on the back seat, leaving two empty seats between him and the woman with the scowl.

"What the Hell are you doing, sitting next to me!?" she shouts at him. "Don't touch me! Don't you fucking get near me!"

He startles, understandably-- I think we all did. He gets up and sits on the seat across from me, giving the rest of the room a nervous grin and swallow. The woman continues, "Yeah, you wanna sit next to the underage girls, doncha! Probably like it. You look at 'em and see all that skin! You're probably a rapist, aren't you? Goddamn, the world is full of perverts like you! Can't go anywhere without running into perverts like you!"

Holy Shiznit, this went on for the entire ten minutes it took for the bus to reach downtown Seattle.

This morning, when I went to get onto the bus, the woman behind me was drinking from a Starbucks cup. After I got on, the driver takes a look at her and says, "Ma'am, you can't get on the bus with that."

The woman, understandably, protests. Of course she can. The driver, to everyone's discomfort, immediately turns her volume to eleven: "You can't bring that drink on my bus! The rules say you can't! No, Ma'am, the rules are clear! You aren't bringing that drink on my bus!"

I'm looking at the rules for Metro Transit. They're posted right over the driver's head. Rules five and six read: "No eating, smoking or littering," and "No alcoholic beverages." This would seem to imply, pretty strongly, that non-alcoholic beverages like, uh, Seattle-brand Starbucks, are kosher.

The poor woman eventually dumped her coffee on the sidewalk before boarding.

This is the exception that proves the rule. If all beverages were banned, it would say "No beverages". By giving a specific exception, "No alcoholic beverages", the signs proves that a general rule "Beverages allowed" exists.

"5. Eating or drinking, with the following exceptions. Consuming food and drinking nonalcoholic beverages is permitted on the mezzanine and exterior plaza levels of tunnel stations and the exterior areas of other passenger facilities. Also, drinking a nonalcoholic beverage from a container designed to prevent spillage is permitted on transit property and the bus."

Yeah, Elf and I already found that when we were talking about this this morning. I told him he needs to send a complaint to METRO about this incident, or it will continue. The bus driver needs to be "educated".